An interesting discussion. Compliance with ISO 15489 should NOT be mandatory (in my opinion) for the reasons given by others (its not a one size fits all thing, and who would police it?) The ISO 9000 series of standards is not mandatory, but you have organisations implementing them left, right and centre. Why do they do that? Because they recognise the value in doing so. Records Managers have to convince their organisations that there is a value in complying with ISO 15489. Naturally, individual jurisdictions can make compliance mandatory - for example, the National Archives of Australia requires Australian Federal Government agencies to follow its DIRKS methodology which is based on ISO 15489. More information at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/dirks/summary.html. The National Archives of Australia also gives guidance on what parts are mandatory and what parts are optional. For example, the development of a Business Classification Scheme is mandatory, but the development of a thesaurus is not. Information on Classification tools is at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/control/tools.html. John Lovejoy [log in to unmask] Despite this sounding like a paid advertorial, these are my own words, not my employers List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance